Do online comments hurt – or aid – our understanding of science?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/online-comments-hurt-aid-understanding-science

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There was something slightly ridiculous about the way the "evidence that trolling makes you stupid" story got passed around the web over the past few days: people complained about the superficiality of online debate by unquestioningly retweeting something they felt they agreed with. IRONY KLAXON, as the kids say.

The actual research behind this story – a paper exploring the effect of "online incivility" on perceptions of emerging technologies for the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication – isn't even published yet. It made the news thanks to a brief mention in a short comment piece elsewhere. This goes against the usual pattern of science journalism, which tends to report research only when it's been peer reviewed and published. The research might be behind a paywall, hard to understand without expert training and perhaps not even linked to directly by the journalist, but the idea is that you could read it yourself if you wanted.

This story subverted that pattern, and sadly not in a way that attempted to open up science more effectively. It disregarded any desire readers might have to connect with the research in detail, only demonstrating the same superficiality of contemporary knowledge consumption it was critiquing.

It did raise some interesting discussion, though. Anthropologist John Hawks concluded that "professional news websites may be the worst way to communicate science, because their comment policies undercut science comprehension". I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I agree it's worth having a think about the range of ways comment policies, cultures and technologies could improve, including simply removing the facility to comment entirely.

I recently agreed to be climate change editor at the New Left Project. One of the other editors suggested we ban comments that doubt global warming. We haven't decided yet. I'm still unsure. In some ways this is a valid point: why should we be in the business of publishing views we profoundly disagree with? That doesn't mean we want to censor such voices, we just don't have to go out of our way to make space for them. They can go elsewhere. Some sites might flourish on disagreement, but the entire web doesn't have to be like that.

When the Royal Society launched some blogs in 2010, they didn't allow comments. The decision seemed a bit retro, a bit overly defensive. But maybe they were just ahead of the time. Frustrated I couldn't leave a comment, I wrote a piece picking up on one of their posts on my own blog. This resulted in a rich comment thread, including input from a couple of fellows of the Royal Society and several other very expert voices. It also led to a commission to write a further piece for an influential science policy magazine, a load of pub chat, Twitter blather and some squabbling over breakfast with my flatmate. Commenting doesn't stop if comments are disabled. It just moves.

Personally, I'm a fan of blog comments. I always dive below the line, even if I also ignore a lot of what I find there. When I talk about things I've written with friends or colleagues, it's often to quote a comment, not something I discovered while writing it.

I remember blogging before comments. It was a quieter, lonelier and duller place. I recall emailing a friend who was annoyingly in-the-know to ask how I could get one of those cool discussion boxes too. I was hungry to join in on the making of conversation. Comments can aid, not hurt, understanding. They can extend the life and reach of stories in very productive ways. They can be insightful, funny and touching. They give useful rights of reply and a chance to counter ignorance. If anything, I'm sad to see those sorts of responses move to Twitter, with discussion threads dissipated and harder to archive.

Even having read that JCMC paper (one of the authors was kind enough to email me an advance copy), I remain more concerned by the politics of astroturfing than comments per se. However, I can see why the idea that trolling makes you stupid hit a nerve and agree there's a lot more thinking to be done here. Ideas on a postcard?